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I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort. From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am. We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.


Socrates


#ignorance #knowledge #truth #understanding #art



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Did you know about Socrates?

Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants led by Plato's relative Critias who had been a friend of Socrates. On the one hand he drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge; on the other Plato's Symposium (Diotima's Speech) and Republic (Allegory of the Cave) describe a method for ascending to wisdom. In 406 he was a member of the Boule and his tribe the Antiochis held the Prytany on the day the Generals of the Battle of Arginusae who abandoned the slain and the survivors of foundered ships to pursue the defeated Spartan navy were discussed.

It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed. 469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method or elenchus.

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